Once a team is formed, the next step is building a good working relationship between group members. This is especially crucial for long-term projects that span several weeks or months, but also a good practice for any instance where students will be working in groups.
Nurture trust and rapport: Building in opportunities and structures for teams to get to know each other can help form the foundation of a strong teamwork experience. This can range from small icebreakers for short class assignments, to an initial meeting specifically structured to introduce one another for long-term projects. For these meetings, encourage students to include the following points:
- Introduce and share aspects about yourselves. This can range from strengths and experiences that may be useful for the project, to sharing about hobbies and extracurricular activities to build rapport.
- Share about previous experiences of groupwork, including what worked well and what didn’t. It is possible some students would have had limited or negative experiences with groupwork in the past, and this can help orient everyone to a better outcome.
- Lafayette College’s guide on Effective Teaming is a resource co-created with students that helps set up teams for strong rapport.
Assign roles: Assigning roles is a good way to define and set expectations on how each member will contribute to the group. The specific role assignments can be established by the group or by the instructor. For multi-part projects, roles can also be rotated by sub-task to give different opportunities for each of the group members.
- Some examples of roles can be found at the University of Michigan’s Assigning Roles page, which includes roles like facilitator, recorder, reporter, timekeeper wildcard
- Different characterizations of roles that may be useful can be found on pages 13-15 of Lafayette College’s guide on Effective Teaming.
Write up a Team Process/Charter document: For projects that span multiple sessions, creating and collaborating on a team process or charter document will help set up the team for success. This document can clearly state the team’s expectations for communication, logistics, decision-making, mediation, group assessment and other important aspects to stay aligned as a team. It could also include the team’s goals and objectives. As an instructor, you may have groups submit this document, especially if strong teamwork is one of your learning objectives. Below are some resources that can help guide the preparation of this document.
- University of Minnesota’s Sample Team policies Agreement Guide
- University of Regina’s Team Charter
- Carnegie Mellon University’s Sample Group Project Tools
Set up Check-ins and reflections: For longer projects, we advise setting up check-ins both internally within the team, as well as with you as the instructor. This can be an opportunity to revisit and reflect on the team agreements, as well as help make sure the project is on track. Ideas for a more formal team assessment structure can be found in the Evaluating Teamwork section. If there is something not quite working well, the team might agree to update their charter. For larger problems, see the section on Supporting Struggling Teams.